"I have been too unfortunate under my former name," he wrote to Mdlle.

du Noy er; "I mean to see whether this will suit me better." The players were at that time rehearsing the tragedy of _OEdipe,_ which was played on the 18th of November, 1718, with great success.

The daring flights of philosophy introduced by the poet into this profoundly and terribly religious subject excited the enthusiasm of the roues; Voltaire was well received by the Regent, who granted him an honorarium.
"Monseigneur," said Voltaire, "I should consider it very kind if his Majesty would be pleased to provide henceforth for my board, but I beseech your Highness to provide no more for my lodging." Voltaire's acts of imprudence were destined more than once to force him into leaving Paris; he all his life preserved such a horror of prison, that it made him commit more than one platitude.

"I have a mortal aversion for prison," he wrote in 1734; once more, however, he was to be an inmate of the Bastille.
Launched upon the most brilliant society, everywhere courted and flattered, Voltaire was constantly at work, displaying the marvellous suppleness of his mind by shifting from the tragedies of _Artemise_ and _Marianne,_ which failed, to the comedy of _L'Indiscret,_ to numerous charming epistles, and lastly to the poem of _La Henriade,_ which he went on carefully revising, reading fragments of it as he changed his quarters from castle to castle.

One day, however, some criticisms to which he was not accustomed angered him so much, that he threw into the fire the manuscript he held in his hand.